FRONTLINE: Cell Tower Deaths

Airs Friday, May 25, 2012 at 9 p.m. on KPBSTV

Monday, May 21, 2012

Credit: Courtesy of Bridget Pierce Guilford

Above: Jay Guilford, top, fell to his death in 2008 while installing cell phone antennas on a tower in Indiana.

Across the country, workers have been falling to their deaths from cell phone towers. To satisfy the ever-increasing demand for cell phone service, tower climbers install and service cell antennas, a job that requires them to ascend hundreds of feet.

In "Cell Tower Deaths," a joint investigation with ProPublica, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith finds that over the last decade, the tower climbers who are building and servicing America’s cellular infrastructure are about 10 times more likely than an average construction worker to die on the job.

High death rates among climbers are caused in part by demanding project deadlines, which lead some climbers to cut corners on safety equipment or to “free climb,” a dangerous practice in which the climber is not attached to the tower. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations prohibit free climbing, yet it was involved in about half of the fatalities FRONTLINE and ProPublica examined.

FRONTLINE reveals that the major cell phone companies are shielded from accountability in the deaths by relying on layers of subcontracting to carry out the tower work. Subcontracting drives costs down and makes it difficult for the government to discipline the major cell carriers. “Just through their own policy they layer themselves away from it,” say Randy Gray, a former OSHA inspector.

“Legally, there’s no way we can really get to that company,” says Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. “Our problem in this industry is that you have these little contractors that may set off in their pickup truck, you know, … and may never have any contact, face-to-face contact, with their contractors.”